Swimming in statistics
William McDonald students learn the low-down on water usage
Erin Steele
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, March 19, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
By the time you've showered, brushed your teeth and used the bathroom in the morning, the average Canadian has used 29 litres of water - and that's if you keep your shower to six minutes and skip out on the morning coffee.
That's two more litres than people in Burkina Faso use in an entire day.
"That's not because they only want to use that much, or they only need to use that much. It's just all they can afford to get," Matt Durkee, who drills water wells for villages in the country in western Africa, told Yellowknifer last week.
Durkee was at William McDonald Middle School Thursday to talk about the Water for Life project through Friends in Action, an international charity.
To bring his points home, he was armed with statistics - such as on average each Canadian uses 320 litres of water per day - and visual representations of the amount of water used by the average citizen of each country. He even got two students to carry a large jug of water around the half-gymnasium five times, taking turns when their arms got tired, to demonstrate a sliver of how far some people have to travel just to get fresh water.
"In some communities that I've worked in, they've had to literally go up to five kilometres to get a bucket of water," Durkee told Yellowknifer.
He said he hoped students could see that as North Americans, they are lucky to have convenient access to an abundance of water, but also recognize that not everybody is quite so fortunate.
"I think we have a responsibility just being in Canada and having so much, to recognize people who don't have very much. And it's a responsibility but also an opportunity to do something about it," he said.
The William McDonald students are no strangers to water-related statistics. To learn about in-direct water use in Canada, students in Denis Legere's science class were tasked with researching how much water goes into producing specific foods.
For one kilogram of steak, it takes 15,000 litres of water to produce; for one chocolate bar, it takes 1,700 litres of water; it takes 255 litres of water to produce 250 mL of milk.
"We do take water for granted in Canada," said Legere.
"Just because we have so much of it, that doesn't mean we should waste it.
Durkee was set to hold a fundraiser this past Saturday to raise money for a group of Yellowknifers to travel to Burkina Faso and drill a water well.
